Monday, February 02, 2009

The big question.. Poverty ? Beggars?

Imagine a day when there is no one who is going to sleep without feeding his family ?Can you?

Let me help you in visualising that, a family living under a huge fly over dirty as hell ,begging and crying ,
little kids playing in dirt ,some of them sleeping so carelesely at a place where you might not even feel like spitting.
Now lets paint a bigger picture :
India is a country with a population over one billion and more than 50 percent of it living right above or below poverty
line in, better known as its shortform BPL. If you do not understand what is "BPL" - let me explain - This line is an imaginary line just like Line of Control between two countries. And beleive me BPL is exactly as disturbed as LOC.

Please catch the sarcasm in the following paragraph :

Our government identifies people living below this imaginary line all over country through a high class
and higly sophisticated method which has exactly no tolerance for errors, and then they tag them as BPL. There are many benefits and schemes for
these people. They get medical and other facilities for free, and food also , they are to get almost 700 gm of
sugar perhead from the local government low cost shop for a very meagre amount , that also they can hardly make.
God !! these poor people are difficult.
This saturday afternoon , while i was still in my blanket pretending that I was fast asleep because i was too lazy to
get out, I realized a huge difference between a middle class society and a better one .And this realization came along with a question.

That is : What actually happened to the high and comaparatively higher middle class in the process of evolution that
they lost all the compassion and kindness or why are they so scared of being compassaionate.

The difference that I am talking about is the one that a family, in a lower middle class or a higher middle
class of a relatively smaller city , always has a small pot full of wheat floor for a poor man knocking ,
shouting , singing or playing some musical instrument in worst possible way on your door while on the other hand same
is not the case with any family in a better society , atleast i have never seen that. Ah!! Poor men in a small place are
luckier than poor of a better place. Atleast someone is enjyoing smaller cities , not that people dont enjoy them ,
they are not enjoyable for people who live there ,though it is for people who visit them once in a while when they
try to get out of their busy lives.

Ok , So coming back to the topic , why did this happen?? how come they lost all the kindness which apparently is a very important human emotion . I am sure people living in Better cities and taller buildings
have enough food in their houses that they can feed a poor everyday as I have seen them feeding their dogs better than
most of the people in my village feed their kids.

So what is it that is suppressing their ability to feel what poor feel and give back a little to the society if not to
make it a better place to live in but aleast for a more selfish motive " PUNYA ", a sacred phenomenon in Hindu Society that
guarantees heaven after death. I am sure there are such concepts in other religions too, pardon me for my ignorance
about other religions I am still trying to understand my own religion so never got a chance to look outside.

So again coming back to topic ,what happened to those people with Maruti 800 to Luxury Cars ,( can you beleieve there
are places where Maruti 800 is considered to be luxurious as they can not afford a better one ), and from Nokia 1100
to Iphone in their hands , with Koutons to Gucci or Armani covering their paunchy figures , why cant they let one rupee
from their wallet go to a poor person , when they can pay thousands to a corrupt givernment official or give thousands as donation to a stupid scoiety which only blabbers about the welfare of human being and then spends that money in its own welfare by improving the qulaity of services of its club .

I found answer after a lot of thinking that I did before going to sleep lastnight and found that there
are some people who in this hautch-pautch life style , have lost their compassion and concern for other human beings ,
worst of them have lost concern about their families too.

But obviously everyone is not like them there are people who are kind and compassionate and wish to do something about
poor.
But they dont, for many reasons some them are :

1. They have read somewhere that they should not promote beggers on roads.
Fair enough . Oe should never give another man a rupee just because he is a begger and pleading for a coin or two.

But my friend why dint you read the other part of the line where it is said that " make them able to earn their livelihood.
"
Because for sure the one rupee that you give is not enough to feed them. I know what are you thinking now ,
how can I do something like that , I am a person of little means but I can always look for people who are with
help of others trying to do something good , why not go and help them. Please do not think that it is impossible
for one person, with a small job where he has to work whole day and then take care of his family and other earthly
human affairs, to do anything in this regard. Atleast do your bit , dont worry about others. These little bits add
together and someday they will make difference to atleast two lives. One that you changed and the other is simply yours.

2. Now there are bad people also around who try to take advantage of the good man inside you , robbers , fake and forced
beggers ( I find it funny that being begger is also some kind of a job and there are "Owners" of big " Begging firms"
who force people to be begger ( rather than apponting them :) ) and then they pay them on a monthly basis with food and
all.
Somehow I have turned into being an optimist and I can see a positive point in all this also , i.e. atleast they are not
going around pick pocketing and kiling people , but another question , is begging better than mugging someone???

I am not sure , how confused am I?


There are many points that I can keep adding here but the thing is when on the one hand we have poor who beg everyday
to earn enough to eat everyday some of them genuinely poor and some fabricated and just too lazy to go out and work on
the other hand we have selfish who do not consider giving back anything to society. I need to get going now my friends
are waiting , we are going for LUCK BY CHANCE, I would finish with one line please do not be any of them neither the
first kind nor the other.

Ciao

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

excellent write up. But I'd like you to do a little more research on your topics and lace your article with some facts and figures. This post is quite emotional ( which may be not be a bad thing) but always try to present a balanced viewpoint. Objectivity is very important because we tend to get swayed by our personal experiences (i.e. in a prepared speech. In ur blog, u can be as personal/ emotional as u want)
But I must commend your imagery and free flowing style. keep writing and more importantly keep reading ( I strongly recommend reading at least one newspaper like Hindu, and one news magazine for starters. you can read anything besides these based on your interests)

Kushagra said...

hi, i do not agree with your point of view. pretty much because am a firm believer of the theory 'man makes his own destiny'. If a person wants to he can. Now begging is mercy living, and in the fast lives of today no one wants junk. when you pay taxes to the government which count in crores(as you talked about the higher class, would you like someone to knock your car window pane at every street ligt and ask for a penny. am not saying its governments job. Look at any successful person be it a politician or a terrorists or an enterpreneur, everyone has been thru a struggle phase and if not them someone else from there near and dear ones have faced it. So its not destiny, not mercy, not governement but its you only who can change your own future... no offence

lifes' like this.. never fair never right said...

Kushagra!! Sure you have a point .. Today an Italian guy asked what can we do abou it ? and whether he is suggested to open his car window everytime to give something to the begger ? I said no .. and there is a lot that we an do but I can not advise to open window to every one rather go to some organization who is trying to help them. Then he asked why is this so in India. I said the socia economic condition in India is not that good that it can provide a chance to every one . while on the other hand it should . But there are veryf few who get out of this mess and do something , few examples may be of great scientists wjo studied under street lamp or great industrialists who started from scratch. But if you say that a man is makes his destiny , i would agree but , but , you are here on internet commenting on a topic while sitting in may be an air conditioned room because you were prviledged, most of us had a family to support us in the beginning when we had nothing , no sense of country , industry , destiny and blah blah. Your thinking could develop because you got admitted to a good college and you got to read good stuff and exposure. But these people dont even get primary education , how can you think that their thinking would be so innovative and moral so high that they would be able to make their destinies ???? I am not sure..

Kushagra said...

Not being too rigid and stringent i would say that education can teach how to read and write but not how to dream. I have seen a widow fourth class working in an office on an uninsured job raising her three daughters and then building their potentials. As I said someone has to pay or work for the comfort generated for the other... Coming to the social service thing, according to my perception it ceases to exist... Be it big businesshouses, NGOs or anyone, such services are generally provided with a motive of tax benefits and things alike on the basis of which several other government benefits are also sought. You might be surprised to know that the biggest charity firms employ the costliest managing man power. One last point the approach is derived from the human tendency "why should i help others when no 1 extended help when i needed it".
I think the biggest social service is to:
1. Pay your employees on time and the amount they deserve.
2. Give the deserved amount to every person without discrimination.
3. Extend any help without going out of the way if possible, because that is where the feasibility factor lies.